I recommend these. UPDATE Sept 15, 2020

[..]

Moving some stuff around in the garage I spot some mouse dropping on some old towels resting on top of an upturned bucket.

Eeeek.

I turn to the bike. Key to on. Starter button pressed and the engine bursts to life.

Phew. No wire chewing.

A few quick clicks and Amazon tells me my 2 pack will be delivered the next day.


Primed with a schmear of peanut butter I place them against the wall where the bucket and towels had been.

This morning there's one poor bugger stiff as a board.

Easy to set with minimal danger of finger guillotining.

They do close with a great deal of force so death will be instant.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Tomcat-Press-N-Set-Mouse-Trap-2-Pack-0360710PM/205563821

[carolinarider09]

I found something very similar at my Lowes store, same vendor.  Mine are black.  I also now keep my garage doors closed unless I am inside working. 

[..]

I also now keep my garage doors closed unless I am inside working. 

Yep, it only takes a second for an interloper to make a move.

I'm surrounded by trees and undergrowth.

[old2soon]

           Sticky boards. Available ar wally wurld. I cut em in half before use. They-meeses-git even a paw on it they stuck. And should meeses still be movin wrap the board around them!  RIDE SAFE.

[0leman]

Been using the Tom Cat's for several years and use peanut butter as bate..  they do work.

Have had issues in the pass years with the pesky critters getting to the house.  Finally found several holes in our floors in the kitchen area this last summer (Hate going under our house's crawl space).  Thought I had all the holes plugged. Found three more ( hard to find when there is a foot of insulation blocking the view).  Used  steel wool (courses that I could find) to stuff into the holes.  So far no critters coming into the house this winter.  Living in a home less than 100 yds. from sagebrush hill side does have its drawl backs. 

[Crackerborn]

I bait the little ba$turds with refillable stations at the sides of the overhead door and near the service door. Chipmunks are also an issue so I use fairly large bait stations and check the bait every month to refill as necessary. I still have to use .22 (sub-sonic) for their cousins, the ring-tailed rats, that one of my neighbors thinks are cute enough to feed on her deck. Part of the joy of living on a heavily wooded property.

[John Schmidt]

I recall an assignment to help audit a division of an oil company in Texas, probably early 60's. Another auditor and I got a room and settled in for the night, we were able to find a suite with two separate rooms with a bed in each. We were sitting there watching TV when suddenly I saw a little one scoot along the wall coming out from behind the TV/dresser combo. We started pulling stuff away from the wall and found his little entrance hole in the corner so my roomie just stuffed a sock in it. Bad move I told him but he wasn't swayed. Next morning I heard him cussing from the other room so ckd to see what's wrong. He held up his foot with the sock on it....or should I say....half a sock on it. Guess the mouse had a taste for his flavor of toe jam. 

We moved to a different hotel. 

[Hook#3287]

New design.

I've been using these for years with good success.

https://www.tomcatbrand.com/en-us/products/mice/tomcat-mouse-snap-traps

Six of these in my garage and the mice population has gone down considerably.

When time to replace, those look good.

[Jess from VA]

In getting rid of a family of mice, I used about five different kinds of traps (as recommended in a Utube), from new (electronic) to old (spring traps with peanut butter).

I got them all (6) in one night, and all but one got stuck in the (cheapest) glue traps.  I could have saved some money.  The other main factor in success trapping is proper placement of the traps (along walls, around food/bait, and egress/ingress).  Along walls, put two in a row, so if a mouse jumps the first, he lands in the second.  

The only downside of glue traps (from all the others) is you still have a live mouse. I used empty coffee cans to scoop them up, but then left them running around in circles inside upright cans because the noise attracted the other mice (like a magnet; I moved more glue traps around the cans and bingo). And sometimes you get two in one trap.  

If you want to try catch and release, knock yourself out, mine perished the next morning (and there was no Service).

PS:  do not step in a glue trap.

I could never determine if the glue itself has any bait smell or attractant to it.  I don't think so, but they jump right in anyway.

I caught one in an electronic trap and he was well electrocuted, but they cost over $20 apiece. 

[hubcapsc]

I turn to the bike. Key to on. Starter button pressed and the engine bursts to life.

It might not hurt to look around under your seat   ...

There's a void under my black bike's seat where they set up residence once,
and ate the accessory wire that powers my heated gear...

-Mike

[sandy]

I saw something a few weeks ago. Cotton balls soaked in peppermint essential oils drive them away. Mice apparently hate peppermint. This could be placed in places to avoid mice during winter storage, like under a seat or under the bike near the wheels and side stand.

[cookiedough]

old fashion 99 cents wood base with metal (not plastic) snap bar works best for me with peanut butter smeared UNDER the small metal plate.  I have had them buggers eat off the peanut butter ON TOP of the metal plate but not many if place bait UNDER the plate they have to dig under the plate and that usually sets the metal wire down on them better.

I set up 1-2 in the garage and 1-2 in the house so far none that I know of but usually get 2-5 per winter in the house.  One year a few years ago seemed to have an infestation of them caught about 10 was disgusting one morning wife screamed bloody murder saw one on the counter scurring around by the kitchen sink and a few days later found one INSIDE the coffee pot drowned to death by old coffee my kids left on counter.  Just glad did not have the kids pour of cup of mice coffee...   

I found a mouse once live in a pop can in the garage surprise he could not get out by himself if he got in why not out?  I stepped on the pop can with my foot/shoe, done deal. 

We do get less though in the house past few years now that the neighbors TOM cat prowls the neighborhood catching mice, birds, and moles, etc.  he is very much a preying cat but not too friendly he likes to come over and spread  his body scent on my legs rubbing his fur/body all around on me while am sitting on my patio but if you try to pet him he either hisses at us or walks off like he owns the place.  My wife got bit (nipped)  by him a few times as well trying to pet him he looks friendly but has an attitude.  I doubt he would try to bite me but if he did he would be getting a boot to him flying him 20 feet away.

[klb]

Back in 1990 I lived in Lenoir NC. There was a big field in back
and the owner decided to bush hog it for the first time in years.
We started noticing mouse droppings so set out 2 traps with
cheese and 2 with peanut butter. Not buying it. A friend told
me to try Fatback. I hooked it to 2 traps and held a lighter to it
til it sizzled. Set them in the floor in front of the kitchen sink and
within seconds four mice appeared 2 came on out for death threw
them in the field and sizzled it again and the other 2 came out and
committed suicide too. Never had any more. I was amazed at how
fast the Fatback drew them out but I like it also. At least they didn't
wait on me to add eggs over easy and grits......

[old2soon]

Back in 1990 I lived in Lenoir NC. There was a big field in back
and the owner decided to bush hog it for the first time in years.
We started noticing mouse droppings so set out 2 traps with
cheese and 2 with peanut butter. Not buying it. A friend told
me to try Fatback. I hooked it to 2 traps and held a lighter to it
til it sizzled. Set them in the floor in front of the kitchen sink and
within seconds four mice appeared 2 came on out for death threw
them in the field and sizzled it again and the other 2 came out and
committed suicide too. Never had any more. I was amazed at how
fast the Fatback drew them out but I like it also. At least they didn't
wait on me to add eggs over easy and grits......

           WHAT-No sweet corn bread? RIDE SAFE.

[Jess from VA]

One addendum to my post above on glue traps.

If you're going to dispatch them (stuck in the glue) with a framing hammer, keep your mouth closed.   

[0leman]

One addendum to my post above on glue traps.

If you're going to dispatch them (stuck in the glue) with a framing hammer, keep your mouth closed.   

Speaking as one who has knowledge? 

[Patrick]

Critters ? Hmm.

Live in the country and you have critters, of all sorts.

Mice, can't keep them out. Little guys can get in anywhere.
Muncks, I live trap the heck out of them. Every couple years they need a good cleaning out. This summer I got 63 which I take over to all my friends. 

In Florida during the winters we have to put up with fruit rats. The mice and mucks I can deal with, the rats I don't like. I've learned to dislike them as much as I hate coyotes and crows.

[9Ball]

Moving some stuff around in the garage I spot some mouse dropping on some old towels resting on top of an upturned bucket.

Eeeek.

I turn to the bike. Key to on. Starter button pressed and the engine bursts to life.

Phew. No wire chewing.

A few quick clicks and Amazon tells me my 2 pack will be delivered the next day.


Primed with a schmear of peanut butter I place them against the wall where the bucket and towels had been.

This morning there's one poor bugger stiff as a board.

Easy to set with minimal danger of finger guillotining.

They do close with a great deal of force so death will be instant.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Tomcat-Press-N-Set-Mouse-Trap-2-Pack-0360710PM/205563821

This could have been my exact situation about 3 weeks ago, right down to catching the one bugger in the garage.  I just re-peanut buttered the traps yesterday just in case this cold snap brings in some more toothy buggers.

[Serk]

If you're feeling creative and wanna take out a whole mess of 'em with one gadget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI

(No first hand experience, but seems interesting)

[Alberta Patriot]

I made 10 of my own plywood bait station boxes about 4x8x2 1/2 with 1 1/8" holes drilled in the ends. I put 2 "Jaguar Bait Chunx" in each box placed onto screws that I inserted from the bottom, so that the bait can't be removed. I placed 2 baffles inside so small pets could not access the bait.
Within about a month I no longer had any sign of voles or mice...my neighbor's vermin vanished well.
It's been 2 years since I did this...never a sign of vermin since. The boxes need to be checked about once or twice a year for bait replacement.

https://www.amazon.com/Motomco-Jaguar-Mouse-Chunx-9-Pound/dp/B000HHLQNQ

[Alberta Patriot]

I moved into a rental home a few years back while building the home I now live in.
The attached garage walls were infested with mice. There was batt insulation in the walls with only vapor barrier over it. There was mouse droppings everywhere in the garage. I tried traps for a while...not much help, they bred faster than you could trap them. One day I decided to roll my car into the garage, closed the door, fired it up and was careful not to be in the house either while it ran. I repeated this several times as the car would shut down after 20 minutes or so.
The next day, after wetting down the floors and ledges to prevent dust,(surgical mask as well) I carefully swept out the garage thoroughly.  After about a week or two, with no further sign of droppings I had the vermin beat. I don't know if I killed them or if they left for better accommodations.
I did search out every hole/crack/loose or poorly fitting garage door rubber weather strips, making sure there was no way they could get in again.
The thing that surprised me is that there was never any sign of vermin in the house.

[0leman]

Growing up in Oklahoma back in the 50-60's, we had several acres of land.  Half was in pasture where my folks raise a calf every year.  there was a barn where we kept the feed and stall for calf.  We had some problems with mouse/rat trying to get in to the feed.  Somewhere my folks heard about using plaster of paris to mix with corn meal.  Both of these parts were  inexpensive.   the critters would eat the mixture and get a lump of plaster in the gut, which they couldn't expel and would kill them.  Mostly they would go back to their holes or where ever they lived to die.   I don't remember any dead one in the barn.

[Jess from VA]

Poison is great, if they aren't in your house.  Dead ones in the walls smell funny. 

[..]

So far no more corpses to deal with. May have been a sole interloper.

[Jess from VA]

Paul, I put a little Decon baits down in the corners of my sheds (and under my deck) for the winter.  Mostly it stays uneaten (with no other food out there), but out of the weather it lasts a while and is a low cost insurance policy.

[Alberta Patriot]

Poison is great, if they aren't in your house.  Dead ones in the walls smell funny.  

My bait stations were never placed indoors. Over time I did find the odd dead mouse on the lawn or in the shrubs. With the rental house garage using the monoxide treatment...nothing, no sign of droppings again or dead mice.
My next door neighbor's building contractor did not properly vermin proof cantilevers, bump-outs etc...the result, mice everywhere including inside the house. I helped him place metal flashings at every possible entry point and fine expanded metal to prevent tunneling into risky areas. Coarse Steel Wool in combo with calking is good for stuffing holes.
It's been a deafening silence on the vermin front these days...I like it.

[..]

Paul, I put a little Decon baits down in the corners of my sheds (and under my deck) for the winter.  Mostly it stays uneaten (with no other food out there), but out of the weather it lasts a while and is a low cost insurance policy.

Mine will be staying primed.

[Jess from VA]

I used course steel wool to fill a hole in my basement.  They had burrowed and eaten their way in through a cement block wall, where the chinking was cracked, right down at floor level.  The visible chink hole/crack was small, but I knew the block was hollow.  It took me a long time of punching one pad of wool at a time in the crack with a half inch dowel, like 70 pads.  Every once in awhile, I'd squirt in some expanding foam (through a long nozzle), just to help pack the wool down as I worked.  When no more would go in, I liquid nailed a steel plate over the crack.  That did it.

There's a whole line of heavy shelves along the rest of that wall with a ton of stuff on them, and I am hoping I never have to tear that all out to fill another hole (so the bait has been going under the deck outside for two years). 

[Steve K (IA)]

Mothballs.  Mice don't like the smell, I don't mind it.  No dead mice, no traps, no bait....

[cookiedough]

Mothballs.  Mice don't like the smell, I don't mind it.  No dead mice, no traps, no bait....

I heard mothballs work as well but am sure mice will find a way around them to get to where they want to go.

although we had something eating in our garden a few years ago and read up on thinking it was rabbits.  We made a batch of stuff on the stove with pepper, garlic powder, etc. in it liquid and used spray bottle to coat leaves and all around the plants on the grass clippings we put down around plants.  WE also read up on human hair clippings since I cut my own hair and sprinkled that all over as well, both worked well no more rabbits.

there are things to deter critters from the areas you do not want them in, but not 100% guaranteed like killing them once in to where they should not be.

[sheets]

I live in a rural environment. Typically have the garage door open during hours of daylight. I've had a little transonic pest killer device in the garage for twenty-five years. Never a sign of a mouse in the garage. Have had a couple little cartons of decon mouse treats placed in nooks and crannies of the garage as added insurance. No evidence of those ever being sampled.   

[..]

Uh Oh.

#2 and #3 met an untimely demise yesterday.

[JimC]

If you're feeling creative and wanna take out a whole mess of 'em with one gadget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI

(No first hand experience, but seems interesting)

I have used those bucket traps for a couple years now.
They work great. For winter use in garage and RV I use RV anti freeze instead of water

Jim

[..]

#4 this morning.

Might be time to buy some more traps for the garage. 

[..]

#5 this morning.

Still can't find where the little buggers are getting in.

[..]

Update.

7 terminated.

BUT

The peanut butter was still disappearing from the traps.

Hmmmm have the traps become faulty.

I call the supplier and they tell me the springs can weaken and send me a refund.

I had liked the success of the traps to this point so I buy 2 more.

Now I have 4 and I clearly mark the 2 new ones and bait all 4 and place them against the garage wall.

WTF!

All 4 are clean as a whistle!

How can this be. Have the meeces developed Bruce Lee like speed or are they standing on their hind legs, one front paw on the upright part of the trap and leaning into the peanut butter to lick at leisure?

Puzzled I revert to the internet.

WTF!

Crickets!
Crickets!

Crickets like peanut butter!

Crickets. I have crickets in my garage. I will admit I've heard the occasional chirp but thought nothing of it.

Ah ha. Glue traps.

I buy a pack of 6, mice sized.

Now I have 4 baited traps lined up against the wall just in case any more meeces are around and a glue trap each side of the spring traps.

Wow crickets are piled up on both glue traps. I have cricket city in my garage.

More are piling up each day.

I have to replace the left side trap as there are so many it would be possible for a cricket to traverse the glue trap without touching the glue.

Then the weirdness starts.


One evening when I get back from work I see the right side glue trap is about 3 feet from the wall and upside down on the ground. 

Repositioned as it was I wait for morning.

WTF!

IT'S GONE.

No, not moved. GONE. GONE. As in gone.

Bloody big cricket!

I check all over the garage and behind shelving where I can.

Nuttin.

I put down another glue trap on the right.

The following morning it too has GONE

Is there a racoon in the garage trying to disguise itself as an armadillo. Or now able to walk on water?

I put down another fresh glue trap and so far that one is still in place.

All the crickets seem to have been caught but I leave all the spring traps and glue traps in place just in case.

[Jess from VA]

My mice are history, but I have a bumper crop of crickets this year.  (a bazillion juveniles)

Regular field crickets and these extra large elbow camel crickets


I don't mind them, but they are not welcome in the house.  My basement walkout (6 steps deep) has a pile of them every morning, and if I open the door they escape inside (where you can never catch them, they just have to starve to death, while chirping away).  

I put down Home Depot Best Defense (insect spray) and that works for a few days, and stomping them slows them down.  After a snake almost got in that door last spring, I now have to open the door and always inspect through the storm window before opening the storm (every time).

When I got mice in the house, I caught most with glue traps, and a couple of the large adults got upside down in them and tried to get away (unsuccessfully).

I've read if using peanut butter to bait traps, too much is a mistake (they eat and get away), so you just brush a little on (which they still smell), so they have to work harder to get it, and set the trap off.

I'd work on the crickets in the garage, before you have to work on them in the house.

Food-grade diatomaceous earth is a non-toxic powder that is created from the skeletons of algae, that will eradicate crickets by piercing and drying out their exoskeleton.  It has no effect on humans or pets.  


https://gardenerspath.com/how-to/disease-and-pests/diatomaceous-earth/

 

[Oss]

seal the holes with rough steel wool pads and roof flashing



The tomcat from the OP broke  I like old fashioned rat traps for mice, rats chipmunks

Essential peppermint oil keeps critters out of the  garage

[Patrick]

I guess I must be doing something wrong. I use mouse traps that are 40 years old. For some strange reason they still catch mouse's.

[..]

No interlopers in the housee.